Son[i]a

We talk to the researcher and curator Maria Ptqk about the possible methodological alliances between art and science. We check out her recent years of research, which have crystalised in the exhibition Science Friction. Life among companion species and in other embodiments and projects. We look at the narrative dimension of scientific knowledge, via Donna Haraway, and at the symbiotic relationships between interdependent organisms through the work of Lynn Margulis. We rethink the complex boundaries between the cultural and natural spheres, and we also embrace the monstrous, in order to call for a multispecies paradigm that overturns human supremacy.

We talk to researcher, teacher, and essayist Jaime Vindel about art, entropy and economics. We go into museums and petrol stations to understand their materiality. We talk about the universal exhibitions of the 19th century and how the removal of objects from their places of origin is directly linked to the process of environmental degradation. We look at their steel and glass pavilions, and find the concrete. We also discuss coal and oil, the concept of productivity, and the dark underbelly of certain visual imaginaries

Aho Ssan is a French musician of Ivorian and Ghanaian descent who has been involved in graphic design and film works under his given name, Desiré Niamké. These practices, like his multiple identity, resonate in his music. In this podcast we talk to Aho Ssan about his grandfather’s lost trumpet and about an Ivory Coast jazz band that’s impossible to track down. Along the way, we share the cinematic tension of his debut LP Simulacrum and the various routes that led him there. Techno’s cultural appropriation, Black Bandcamp, and the glaring lack of representation of black artists in global electronica are part of the road he has travelled and the lessons learnt along the way.

Whether in her teaching or her participation in the popular resistance for universal access to water, Andrea Ballestero’s approach is a feedback exercise that completely blurs the division between theory and practice. Her work advocates a collaborative, feminist modus operandi on ethnography, as well as the affordances of the environment: be that an ecosystem, a regulatory agency, or 'the technolegal devices at the centre of these political mobilisations'. We talk to Andrea Ballestero about aquifers and amorphous futures, about imagination as an essential part of the academic research process, and about the potential of bureaucratic practices as cogs in a possible machinery of change—which does not necessarily have to involve large-scale global transformations.

Based in Dakar, Senegal, Raw Material Company is an independent, collaborative centre that aims to foster critical thinking through artistic practice. In this conversation, Marie Hélène Pereira and Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy—two key members of Raw Material Company—discuss a situated feminist and decolonial practice that focuses on doing rather than enunciating and categorizing. They share some of their experiences and talk about the strategies they use to create rich forms of dialogue and to negotiate the tensions and the ideological and economic constraints imposed through the still-colonial structures of the so-called global North.

Luz Pichel is a poet. Her writing comes out of all those places and even others that she did not physically visit but reached through curiosity, imagination, and empathy. The tension between major and minor languages, the liberating potential of a non-stabilised and nob-folklorising use of dialect and the crack of invention opened up by memory and childhood, are some of the paths that her poetry explores. 

Samaneh Moafi is an architect and the senior researcher at Forensic Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London. She oversees the Centre For Contemporary Nature, a division within Forensic Architecture which explores the relationship between human rights violations, environmental violence, and anthropogenic climate change. In this podcast, Samaneh Moafi turns our gaze to notions of ecocide, negative commons and environmental violence in pursuit of accountability and change. In doing so, she takes us through the Negev desert, extraterritorial toxic clouds, orangutan nests in Indonesia, forest fires and weaponised wind gusts in the Gaza strip.

DeForrest Brown’s work includes music released under the moniker Speaker Music, but largely revolves around research and writing. He looks back at the complex roots of black American culture and at phenomena like techno, in order to expose this systematic obliteration. And above all, to draw attention to the neglected creativity of its pioneers and the rich sonic universe they created from the rubble of a crumbling Detroit. Against the tide of the prevailing narrative, Brown’s work seeks to contextualize these episodes by highlighting key economic and political factors of the time, intertwined with personal anecdotes and a sincere love for the music.  We talk to Deforrest Brown about Detroit veterans, broken futures, Reaganomics, screams, government sanctioned murder, and Disco Demolition in the post-truth era.

Antonia Baehr’s works explore the fiction of the everyday and of the theatre, among other themes. That’s how her official bio at the time of writing this starts. But it does not fully convey the level of meticulousness that goes into her performances in order to emphasise every little aspect of the area between everyday life and the theatre. We talk to Antonia Baehr about switching roles, about her strategies for collaboration, some of her alter egos, gender stereotypes, and much, much more. Prepare for a bumpy ride that will take you from scores and Fluxus, to imitation, fetishism, and socks, by way of drag kings, drag queens, S&M, contracts, and even telepathic connections.

Writer, researcher and curator Maite Garbayo-Maeztu talks about writing, motherhood and low-intensity abandonment. She examines the aesthetic materiality of bodies and brings up quotations as gestures by which one becomes intertwined with those who came before, like acts of loving alignment. The ideas that emerge from the conversation include the notion of incalculability—the new that emerges between corporalities, like a gift for those whose practice allows for unexpected, totally unplanned, ways of politically enlivening the things around them.